In today’s society, the question of whether women should work has become a controversial topic, even within the Church. However, it is important to approach this discussion with nuance and recognize that framing it as a dichotomy between working or staying at home oversimplifies the complex situations that real women face. In this blog post, we will explore the intersection of charisms (spiritual gifts) and women’s work, highlighting the need for a more open and inclusive conversation.
Understanding Charisms
Charisms are the spiritual gifts that the Holy Spirit bestows upon individuals within the Church. When we discern our charisms, we discover how the Holy Spirit is already active in our lives and how we can use our gifts to build the Church. It is crucial to recognize that charisms can find expression not only within the family but also in the larger world and the Church community.
Breaking Down the Dichotomy
The framing of the question as “should women work or not” perpetuates a toxic version of feminism that limits work to a traditional 9 to 5 job or staying at home. This reductive approach fails to serve women who are trying to discern their gifts and live out their motherhood. Instead, we should create a wider diversity of options that match the diverse gifts women have been given.
Historical Perspective
Throughout history, women have always worked. Whether it is providing for their families within the home or contributing to the larger community, women’s work and labor have been integral parts of their lives. Therefore, the conversation should shift from whether women should work to how we can break down the forums in which women work and find a balance between family and other responsibilities.
Timing and Prioritizing
It is crucial to acknowledge that the optimal breakdown of work and family time may vary depending on the season of life and the needs of the family. The timing factor plays a significant role in deciding what is best for each individual and their unique circumstances. Conversations about work should be collaborative between spouses, prioritizing the needs of the family while utilizing the gifts given by God.
Supportive Partnerships
In the discussion of women’s work, it is essential to consider the role of men in supporting their partners. Both parents should prioritize investing in the family, and creating space for men to be present and involved is equally important. Ultimately, men and women working together in supportive partnerships can bring about a healthier and more balanced family life.
The intersection of charisms and women’s work requires a nuanced and open conversation that embraces the diversity of gifts and circumstances. Instead of falling into the trap of a narrow dichotomy, let us create space for women to explore and discern how they can use their gifts to serve their families, communities, and the Church. By trusting in God’s guidance and seeking unity within the family, women can find fulfillment in their work while prioritizing the well-being of their loved ones.
Jill Simons:
Hello, and welcome to Charisms for Catholics. My name is Jill Simons, and I’m the executive director at Many Parts Ministries where we equip the Body of Christ by helping people learn about and discern their charisms, which is really another word for spiritual gifts. When you discern your charisms, you’re are able to see how the Holy Spirit is already active in your life and where he is inviting you to further build the Church. Let’s dive in.
Jill Simons:
Hello, and welcome to today’s podcast. I know my voice doesn’t sound quite right. I was at a football game last night cheering for our beloved high school team, for at the school where my husband teaches. And they had an incredible upset last night, and it was just so much fun. I am one of those people that gets way too into sporting events Despite having absolutely no athletic ability of my own, because I think it’s the same reason I love charisms honestly is because anytime I see people working together and coming together on something and accomplishing something together, I just am so struck at what an innately human thing that is, what a beautiful human thing that is to be able to come together, have a shared goal, and accomplish something and how much that is a image of what we’re called to do and be in the Church. And so when you have, you know, this team that coalesces around their image of what success can look like and what they can accomplish together and see them succeed is just so much fun. Very long story about why my voice is a little bit off. But I’m coming from you from the floor of my closet on a Saturday morning, which is not a time when I would ever be recording a podcast normally, but I just felt an incredible movement of the Spirit.
Jill Simons:
Like, I needed to talk about this, and this is going to be getting into a really controversial topic in the Church, which is it’s really unfortunate that it is controversial. And so we’re gonna attempt to have this conversation today with just a truckload more nuance than I really ever see the conversation had with, and that is going to be around whether or not women should work. This obviously intersects with charisms because a lot of times charisms find a really beautiful expression in the work that we do and I want to just start off by undermining the question just to begin with because that’s the wrong question. The question is not whether women should work or not. And I think framing it that way buys into the same toxic version of feminism, the same toxic feminist vision that got us in this pickle in the first place, where there’s this idea that that that work, quote, unquote, is only going to the office and having a 9 to 5 job. And, basically, there’s that or there’s staying at home, and that’s just the dichotomy that we have to choose between. And we have to, like, fall into a camp of either women should do one or should do the other, or it’s always better to do one or it’s always better to do the other. And this reductive way of having this conversation does not serve anyone, especially the poor, heart-sick women trying to make this excruciating decision about what they do to both use their gifts and live their motherhood.
Jill Simons:
And ask me how I know. This is my own story as well. I have charisms that are not really fully realized in the four walls of my home. I can use them in my home in in certain ways. But ultimately, the the call is not to use them primarily in the four walls of my home. So for instance, I have craftsmanship. Obviously, tons of great ways that I can use that as a mom, and I do. But there is also tons of avenues to use that to serve the larger world, the larger Church outside of my domestic church in my home.
Jill Simons:
Leadership is another great example. In my home, my husband is the leader because he needs to be the leader of our family. That is the correct way for a family to be ordered, and I have no desire to undermine that. But I also need to use this gift of leadership that I’ve been given, and that has really pushed my husband and I to discern that well then there’s another forum outside of our family where I’m being called to use this leadership. And so what happens basically is when we boil this entire conversation down to this false dichotomy of should women work or not, we lose all of this complexity of situation that real women are dealing with in their day to day life. And that is why it is my biggest biggest biggest biggest pet peeve in the entire world when I see Catholic creators, writers, speakers, you name it, making a stand on one side or other of this false dichotomy. Women should always stay home. Women always need to, you know, be working or something like that.
Jill Simons:
I think that’s obviously the way less held view. I see it so much more often that, oh, it’s always inherently better. It’s inherently more virtuous, and it’s inherently better for the family. I’ve even seen once someone say that you cannot expect your children to stay Catholic unless you stay home with them. The toxicity around this conversation is just appalling. And I have had more women then I can count, come to me furtively, like, in my DMs or pull me to the side at a conference and say, can I just talk to you about how you decided to work because I kind of don’t want to tell anyone, but I kind of feel like maybe there’s something else I’m supposed to be doing? And these things I see so often just kind of squash that. And granted, a lot of these creators will say, say, like, oh, you know, this is best case scenario. And, of course, there’s extenuating circumstances.
Jill Simons:
Like, if you’re gonna be homeless, if you don’t have a job or something like that. And and set it up like you have to have these grave, intense reasons for even considering not being home all day with your children. This is also just so unhelpful because there’s a lot of real people trying to make very real decisions based on what they feel the Church is teaching them. And when we have this misrepresentation of of Church teaching, it really hurts people. So point one kind of foundation premise, the Church does not have a statement on whether or not women must be home with their children all day. That is not a point of dogmatic theology that we have to believe or not believe as Catholics. So just anything that anyone is saying is based on kind of extrapolation from what we have from the Church on what might be best. And if you haven’t noticed in learning about charisms, if you’ve been if this is your first episode, if you’ve been with us for a while, any learning that you do about charisms draws you into understanding the diversity of options for people within the Church.
Jill Simons:
There are so many different charisms just to begin with. And then secondly, there’s combinations in the millions for how charisms can be combined uniquely in an individual. And so to me, when I’m looking at, okay, we have women with combinations of charisms that differ into the millions, and we are trying to have a conversation about what they should do with their time. Isn’t it clear that a dichotomy is going to be so, so much more reductive than is necessary in that conversation. Shouldn’t there be a wide diversity of have options to fit the wide diversity of gifts that women have been given. I think in this modern age, especially there is a real need for us to look forward at all of the good diversity really offered by the diversity of options right now, by the fact that there are work from home jobs. There are jobs that are more flexible.
Jill Simons:
There’s a lot of part time jobs that aren’t just working at retailer fast food, there is so many more options available. And having this conversation in a more nuanced way leaves the door open for those things. And so after after kind of undermining this first dichotomy, should women work? We wanna look also at the fact that historically, the question should women work makes absolutely no sense. Because since the time since time immemorial, women have worked and still do work when they are home with their family to provide what their family needs and to provide for the larger community. And so to me, work and labor is inherent in a woman’s life, and the conversation needs to be shifted to how do we break down the forums in which women are working right now. That becomes a much more interesting conversation about, do women need to be giving 100% of their work to their immediate family, do they need to be giving 80% of their work? Do they need to be giving 40% of their work? And having that conversation on a much much more individualized level. Again, not saying, you know, 80 is optimal and everybody needs to do 80%. But but having this realization That all women are working.
Jill Simons:
All women are laboring for the good of those they love and for the good of the Church. And what does the breakdown of that look like? Our Blessed Mother did not just sit and watch Jesus play all day. And and I know everyone knows that, but but we need to understand that that is work just like work outside the home. And it’s so much more about where is the time oriented? Am I orienting the correct proportion of time to inside the home and outside the home with my labor, whether or not it’s paid, whether or not it’s formalized. And just looking at if you are comfortable with where that breakdown is for you because the 9 to 5 is not the only option. It’s never has been the only option. For for many years in the early 20th century, especially, it was the primary option. And even into, the 80s the 90s and early aughts, that was, you know, very standardized, but that has disintegrated a lot.
Jill Simons:
There is so many more options available. And that is the ultimate reason why I am for women exploring what work can look like in conjunction with your family. And I think that that is an underrepresented part of the conversation, creating space for women to explore what can coexist with the labor that I do within my family in a way that uses the gifts I’ve been given to serve the larger Church and maybe also fills me and potentially also fills financial needs that my family has. Because whenever I hear this argument, the women need to stay home. They must stay home. I did stay home with my children, for almost 5 years. And it was incredibly, incredibly hard for me because my temperament was very unaligned to doing that for a lot of reasons. I also felt like I was not using any of the gifts that I had been given accept for kind of tangentially.
Jill Simons:
And so though I treasured that time with my children, now that I have two children again. So at that time, I had two children who were almost two years apart that I was home during their kind of baby toddlerhood together. Now I have another two children in that same age range. They’re both toddlers. Like, it’s a toddler to preschool age child, and they spend their days with an incredible woman who is basically a third grandmother to them. She he they’re in her home with four other children. And they get to play and be made blueberry pancakes and go outside and have a great time. And that woman who has become a dear friend and near member of our family is able to continue using her gifts that are incredibly oriented towards staying home with children now that her children are gone.
Jill Simons:
And she is incredibly fulfilled by the time that she spends with the seven children that she spends her days with. And my relationship with my two little ones is so so so much more joy filled for me than it was with my other two children, not because I love these children any differently, but because I was trying to provide for my oldest two children from such a place of depletion for myself personally. As opposed to now, I am incredibly fulfilled buy the forum that I have to use the gifts that God has given me. And I am incredibly, incredibly thankful afford the time to come home and be with them and only be with them. And so for me, it was and my husband, as well, this has been a conversation in common and never has it been a this is what I’m doing ultimatum. This needs to be collaborative between the spouses. But my husband from the beginning has been the biggest supporter of just saying, Jill, you need to do this.
Jill Simons:
There is something that you’ve been given to give that I don’t think the primary forum for that gift is our immediate family. And that doesn’t degrade our immediate family in any way. But what we continue do. And this is the part of the conversation that gets left out so often. What we continue to do is prioritize giving me, and my husband to a certain extent, but primarily me as mom, the maximum amount of time with our children as possible while still doing the things that I’ve been called to do. So every day, I’m the one that drops off for school, picks up from school. If my children are home, I am with them. I am playing with them.
Jill Simons:
I’m making their food, I’m reading to them, and they never really see me working because that’s what works for our family and that’s what works with my job. But, again, I never want to fall into the same error that I’m kind of calling out in other people of saying, so this is how it works. This is what you do. Yours might look different than that. For a while, we found a pretty good groove with having everybody home and having a sitter come in for, I think it was about 12 hours a week, and I would do my work during that time. And then all the rest of the week, I would be with my children And I would be able to be really present to them. But I think that whenever it becomes a conversation that leaves women feeling trapped. We’ve done something wrong.
Jill Simons:
I think that one of the biggest responses I have seen since launching this charism public ministry, and even prior to when I was just doing private care as a ministry with individuals, I found so many women who had been feeling this draw into the larger Church, and they felt very filled with shame about it. They felt like they were not being good mothers. They were not adequately loving their children. They were not invested enough in their family, all of these things that just really afflicted them spiritually as they wrestled with them. And so anytime we have one of those cases where we are really hearing something that is disquieting our spirit. Just like in politics, we always wanna follow the money. In spiritual matters, we wanna follow back to who who would encourage us to feel this way? So if we have right and holy guilt after having sinned, who would encourage us to feel that way? Well, God would encourage us to feel that initial guilt to invite us back into communion with him, to invite us to take part in the sacrament of Confession, something like that. But if we feel crushing shame after having sinned, that is going to be a divisive feeling, something that’s gonna pull us away from God.
Jill Simons:
Who would want us to feel that way? Well, that would be from the evil one wanting to crush us under our own shame to keep us from reaching out to God’s mercy. And so we find the same thing in this situation. If women know that they have received these beautiful gifts from God and have this crushing anxiety around the fact said, oh, but if you use them, you are abandoning the most important people in your life. Does that make sense that that would be from God? I don’t think that it does. Like, I I really struggle to imagine how God could possibly give us something to then look at us and say, but if you use it, you’re in trouble. That just is not are indicative of how God is. Now I will say I have had very clear seasons in my life, like the point in time when I was staying home with my children, where I was receiving very clearly from God in prayer to wait. This is not the time.
Jill Simons:
I was not being called to work outside the home at that specific time in my life and motherhood. And when I prayed about my gifts and what God wanted me to do and things like that, It was clear that God wanted me to do these things in the future, but the time was not yet. And so, again, another place we need to have nuance. There is also a huge timing factor to all of these things. What is good for you and your family this moment, this year might not be the same thing that God is inviting you into in two years or three years or five years. And that’s why keeping this conversation open and vital and alive and a lot more spacious than it typically is, creates the opportunity for people to discern well and be open to what God is doing in this moment. Like, we always talk about, our charisms are what the Holy Spirit is doing in this moment. And when we reduce this important life altering conversation to a pithy question, like, should woman should women work? We are doing a huge disservice to all of the women who have to decide whether or not they are going to work and what that’s gonna look like in their lives.
Jill Simons:
I think that it’s clear that everyone in a family, both parents in a family, need to be prioritizing investing in the family. That is on that is untethered from gender. That is not something that is exclusive to women. We would never have the conversation, you know, should should men work, obviously, because we understand that men’s role primarily is provider, which fine. I’m very comfortable with there being gender roles. But at the same time, we focus so much on how much women need to pour into their families, which they do. But I think there’s another conversation that is almost never had, which is how can we also make space for men to better pour into their families. So we’re talking about, you know, should women work, setting up, women need to pour all of themselves into their families.
Jill Simons:
There’s very little conversation that I’ve ever come across. Correct me if I’m wrong. Feel free to send me an email. This is the kind of thing that I can imagine getting a lot of emails about. And I’ve never heard a conversation about how is it that we make space in men’s life to pour into their families more, their their children, their wives? To me, that’s an equally important thing to talk about, again, with nuance and space So that it can look different for different people. Some people provide for their families by being on the road, truckers, traveling, you know, reps, things like that. And so that’s gonna look different for them than my husband who teaches high school and has breaks and summers off. He makes an incredible amount of time to be with us and pour into us.
Jill Simons:
But I see in my boys, especially, my daughter as well, but especially my three boys, how much there is a hunger to be with dad, to spend as much time with dad, it’s possible to have dad be proud of them, all of those things. And so I think when when real couples are really having this conversation and actually deciding, does mom work or not? There needs to be a correlating conversation about how can we create space for dad to be as present as possible to the family, to mom. Because I read study the other day and I’ll have to go find the citation for this. But I read that a woman’s ability to be a good mother is most powerfully determined by the supportiveness of her partner. And, obviously, in our broken world, we have very many women living out their motherhood by themselves, and that is tragic. That is not the way that this was set up to work. And I don’t say that to to make it seem like you are incapable of being a good mother. But To show that men are an important part of this equation.
Jill Simons:
And I think that when there’s this emphasis on women must stay home or it’s always better for women to stay home. We lose track of the fact that both parents are so necessary as a present in as a present in the home. And the conversation needs to be, how can we both be as present as we can be, as God is inviting us to be To our children right now based on our season of life, their season of life, their needs, everything that we have to take into consideration. And if that comes down to mom needs to stay home, amazing. I absolutely support that. I love that for your family. But also, if that means that mom has a part time job or mom even has a full time job or mom works seasonally or, you know, takes summers off or something, then I equally love that for your family. And if you find yourself, especially for financial reasons, falling into one camp or the other in a way that you do not want to, something that is not life giving for your family, something that is not filling your cup and allowing you to really joyfully enter into your domestic church, then then pray about that.
Jill Simons:
Offer that up to God. Share with him what it is is the desires of your united heart as a couple for your family, what you want that space and breakdown to look like. And and trust God to make a way, not necessarily tomorrow, but in his own time, that he will either make a way or show you the grace in the way that is that you are walking right now can help you adapt your heart to the situation in front of you even if it doesn’t feel like exactly what you wanted. I I know that during that stay at home period of my life, it did not feel like what I wanted. But there was a lot of heart expansion that the Lord wanted to do in me during that time that now is so valuable that I look back and wouldn’t have it any other way. And so we just trust God with whatever the situation is that that beautiful verse for moments is gonna come true, that he is going to work all things together for good for those who love and serve him. And ultimately, if your desire is to love your family, be true to your vocation, use the gifts God has given you, and those three things are really your guiding light, then whether you work or not, you can live a wonderful, saintly, holy life. If you can’t tell, I get really fired up about this.
Jill Simons:
Thank you for listening. And if you have anything that you wanna add to this conversation, feel free to join us in this conversation station on social media this week or send me an email at hello@manypartsministries.com. I love you all, and I pray that whatever your work and family life looks like that you are entering into it, not because someone said this was the only option, but because you feel that this is where God is leading you and your family right now. God bless you.
Jill Simons:
Thanks so much for joining us on today’s episode of Charisms for Catholics. If you you would like to learn more about your charisms or begin your own discernment journey, head to our website at many parts ministries.com where you can download our free PDF guide to all 24 charisms and also begin your own journey by taking our charism assessment.
